No record exists of all the house and barn fires that have occurred in Lincolnville during its 200- plus years. Such a record can only be assembled through the memory of inhabitants, as in “there used to be a house right there, but it burned.” Here are a few:

 KEY TO MAP OF FIRES AROUND LINCOLNVILLE

The big house at 2702 Atlantic Highway which was the twin to the Ulmer House, 3 South Cobbtown Road, had a history of fires in its kitchen chimney. Young Lester Pitcher lived there until 1916, and he remembers looking back at his house and seeing a stream of fire come out of the chimney, blowing straight back. Sometime in the 1930s the house burned to the ground, the result of a chimney fire.  A

Beach Community Hall, burned in 1932.  B

Lincolnville Beach suffered a large fire in 1918 that destroyed Ellis Freeman’s former livery stable, and other nearby buildings, including Fred French’s store; the Post Office and its parking lot stands on that site today. The flat rock at the base of the flagpole was the doorstep to French’s store, and until 2001 when the new post office was built, it had never moved from its spot at the edge of Atlantic Highway.  C

Sarah Davis shook down the coal stove, and put the ashes out in the old manure pile; it burned down the chicken barn, 161 Ducktrap Road. D

Milton Brown’s family farmhouse, about 756 Beach Road, caught fire from the wood furnace and burned to the ground. Just a short while before his bride, Mae, had died of typhoid fever. E

One fire produced a mystery that’s never been solved. When Leigh Richard’s barn at about 261 Youngtown Road, caught fire, it could be seen from all over town. One after another people headed in the direction of the blaze. Amon Morse saw the smoke from his farm, 131 Belfast Road, Northport (the farm that would itself burn down in 1955), and thought immediately of his younger brother, Lester. Doris Carver slogged through Youngtown Road’s kneedeep mud to check for her parents, Russ and Jennie Carver, who feared it was their son Pete Carver’s place. Amon Morse wasn’t far off in worrying about his brother, for the next day a young boy, looking around the ruin saw what he thought was a dead calf. It wasn’t; the body of Lester Morse lay there, apparently a suicide. But an unexplained gunshot wound, and the fact that Pete and Eileen Carver, right next door, never heard a shot, led the police as well as the whole town to wonder if he’d been murdered and the barn set afire to hide the crime.  F

Gideon Young’s house and barns were consumed at 435 Youngtown Road while a child, Ethel Young, watched, horrified, from the hill that separated her home farm from her uncle’s. The year was about 1890. The handsome house her future husband, Claude Heald, built for her stands on the site today. G

Martin Athearn helped fight the October 1947 fire in the marsh behind the Center. It was too much for him, and he died of a heart attack within the week. H

Across from the Center School, 208 Main Street, there was a little house that burned down, and a steep slope behind that where the children used to slide. Later, it was filled in when Dean & Eugley’s was built in 1933.  I

The original Scott Knight’s store straddled the brook that flows through the Center, at about 265 Main Street. On the third floor was a small rental apartment, and sometime during WWII the sloping ceiling was ignited by the kitchen oilstove. Many Lincolnville men were working at the Camden Shipyard at the time, and the call went out for them to come home to help fight the fire. Fortunately, the fire department was able to save the Moodys house next door, 263 Main Street, although the back end had caught fire. The store was a complete loss.  J

On the site where the brick telephone switching building stands today, about 270 Main Street, was a two-story house with a porch. Byantha Brown, widowed, lived there and took in elderly boarders, two at a time, and cared for them until they died. After her death the house burned. K

Effie Dickey almost burned her house down, 2236 Belfast Road, when she spread hot coals under some bushes. The grass caught fire and burned down a smithy house up back. L

One of the saddest tragedies ever known here was the fire last Saturday June 9, at 9 a.m. which destroyed the home of Mr. & Mrs. Carl Matthews Read the rest of the story in This Week in Lincolnville  Sept. 15. M

      Horace Robbins lived like a hermit with his sister on Masalin Road, and eventually the place started to deteriorate. The chimney “went to pieces” and caught fire, burning down the house. But the barn didn’t burn so Horace lived in the grain box out there for a time, until the neighbors built him a small house right there. No mention is made of what became of his sister, but women don’t usually take to living in grain boxes. N

      John Johnson’s farm at on High Street burned in September 1940, probably from spontaneous combustion of the hay in the barn. In spite of the fire they were able to get out most of the furniture, but they never saved a dish. O

      Another High Street place, Merrill and Louise Brown’s farm didn’t survive either, burning after the last owner, Gus Heal left it.  P

      The farm at 321 High Street belonged to Gilbert Wellman for a time; it was  quite a nice place with hardwood floors and a bathroom. It too burned down. Q

      One February day Hazel Wentworth Talbot was home at about 280 Heal Road, with her little daughter and elderly father, Albert. She was outside when she heard a noise coming from the second floor. The house was on fire! She managed to call Central and report the fire. Her brother, Virgil Hall, who was Lincolnville’s fire chief and lived just down the road at the Center, got the call. But when he went to start the fire truck he found someone had siphoned the gas from it. By the time he got there the house was lost. Hazel speculated that her father, who was quite unsteady at that time, may have dropped a coal from his pipe onto the husk-filled mattress. The family lost everything they owned, and had to spend the rest of the winter in a camp they had on Norton Pond. R

     On March 10, 1927 “the citizens of Lincolnville Centre and the community met at Mr. and Mrs. Russell Heal’s (199 Main Street) for the purpose of organizing a Fire Company.” With Joseph Mullin acting as temporary chairman, officers were elected: President, Virgil Hall; Secretary, May Scruton and Treasurer, Russell Heal. In addition to these standard positions, the all-important entertainment committee was appointed—Eleanora Knight, Grace Heal and Lucy Knight.

      What followed was a perfect division of the sexes, with the women doing what they did best—raising money and keeping the minutes, while the men, as they set about equipping the new fire company with a fire truck, pumps and hoses, handled the money. The women lost no time, for that very first meeting was also a fund-raiser. They charged admission, sold stew and chances on a “guess cake” for a total take of $21.45. The Lincolnville Fire Company was off and running.

      Throughout that spring events were held nearly every week, events that included suppers, card parties and dances. Evelyn Brown Eilers remembers these suppers which were put on in various homes to raise money for the fire department. One was held at their High Street home (which later burned); it was all lit up, with lamps in every room. An “amazing number of people” came, each bringing a dish and paying $.50 or a $1 as well. By the end of the summer the treasury held nearly two hundred ninety dollars. A few private donations, including two one hundred dollar gifts from summer people, one hundred each from the Grange, the Chautauqua fund, the Picnic fund and smaller donations from individuals, meant there was enough money to begin shopping.

      At an October 1927 meeting, Virgil Hall was instructed to travel to Springfield, Massachusetts to take a look at the chemical tanks that city was selling. Russell Heal was to “select and purchase a pump if he finds one which he considers suitable.” So in early November Virgil trekked to Springfield and bought the tanks on the spot for one hundred and sixty dollars. Russell purchased a new Evinrude High Pressure Pump for four hundred sixty dollars not long after, and they were almost in business.

      All that was lacking was the vehicle to carry the equipment. They found it at Portland Buick Company, and for three hundred dollars purchased a Marmon Touring car in December 1927, just about wiping out their funds. So they turned their attention to finding a place to house the new equipment. Then, in April 1928, Minnie Parker gave the fledgling fire company the use, rent-free, of the small building next to her house, 255 Main Street, formerly a shoe making shop, to use as a “fire-engine and clubhouse.” [That building was later moved to 257 Main and converted to a house.] Now, the men at least had a project that didn’t have to cost a lot. With some paint and nails, along with the donation of a set of doors, they spruced up the building that they referred to in their records as the Hose House.

      Virgil was meanwhile, tackling the Marmon in his garage (lately known as Grampa Hall’s), removing the body and refashioning it to accommodate the pump on the back, the chemical tank, and two hundred feet of hose. Another fund-raising season had to pass with the familiar box socials, card parties and dances, to replenish the Fire Company’s treasury, before he could be paid. When he finally submitted a bill in March 1929, Virgil had charged the Company just seventy-five cents an hour for his labor. By May of that year the Fire Company’s cash-on-hand totaled eighty-two cents. When all expenses for remodeling the truck were added up it had cost the Company two hundred and twenty-seven dollars, plus of course, the original three hundred.

      In the beginning the calls reporting a fire were made to Central (the Lincolnville Telephone Co.’s switchboard located at the Scruton’s house, 2020 Belfast Road in the Center). The operator on duty could activate the fire whistle on Virgil Hall’s garage, thus alerting the firemen at their various jobs or homes around the Center. In later years a system was installed where the phones in each fireman’s home rang together when the fire number was dialed. That way, all the men, or their wives, picked up at a certain ring and heard where the fire was. This system was still in use when Wally and I moved to Lincolnville. Fire departments notwithstanding, country dwellers still come home scanning the sky, looking for smoke or a glow on the horizon. They pull into the dooryard, and more times than not, it’s with the unspoken thought, “What do you know? The place is still standing.”

Read more about Lincolnville’s history in Staying Put in Lincolnville 1900-1950, available at Western Auto or Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs.  More about our modern fire department  next week.

We’re coming up on the Beach Tree Lighting and Community Christmas party this Saturday, starting at 4 p.m. at the Beach with the bonfire and carol singing. Contact Christine Buckley if you can help her put the party together: this involves volunteers to help the school children make ornaments this Tuesday afternoon, helpers to make sandwiches and decorate Saturday morning at the L.I.A. building, and more helpers at the party, setting up and cleaning up, about 3:30-6 p.m., start to finish. Meanwhile, Andy Young, 323-1334, who has perfected the perfect bonfire over the years, could use some help too. That project starts earlier in the afternoon.

      Librarian Sheila Polson says, “Come to Game Night this Tuesday from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Library! Play Scrabble, cribbage, cards, or any one of the other fun games available. We’d love to keep doing this once a month if there is enough interest. Feel free to bring your own games and ideas!

      Josh Gerritsen and Betty Johnson will host a free showing of their film “How County Government Works” on Wednesday, December 3 at 7 p.m. at the Lincolnville Community Library. Betty, a longtime Lincolnville resident, was recently elected to her second term as Waldo County commissioner. She wanted to make the film to show people how all the county departments work. The film follows her as she visits and interviews staff in the Emergency Management Agency, 911 Call Center, Sheriff’s Office, County Jail, Re-entry Center, County Commissioners Office and District Attorney’s Office. “I think it’s crucial that the public understands where their tax dollars go and this was a great opportunity to shine a light on it,” said Josh, who used his remotely controlled drone for the film’s opening scenes of downtown Belfast. “I set out to make the most captivating film on county government in the country and hopefully we accomplished that.” For more information, call 763-4343 or email . 

      Lincolnville’s other successful candidate in last month’s election was Chris Burstein, who is now Lincolnville’s Representative to the Legislature, as well as for the towns of Belmont, Liberty, Montville, Morrill, Palermo and Searsmont. Chris writes: “From the start of my campaign in April,  to winning the election on November 4th, I have met many of my new constituents.  I have driven to your houses, met your children, parents and many pets.  I have seen some wonderful homes complete with happiness and love.  I also have seen many situations that truly affected me.  I've seen poverty, wealth, neglect, pride, anger and love.  I've been met with kindness and also with such rudeness that I walked away in shock. But from all of this I feel that I have gained an insight and education as to the people of District 96 in Waldo County.  To my supporters  I'd like to say ‘Thank You’.  I also have to say thank you to the many volunteers who kept me safe, kept me on track and gave of their time and encouragement.  But to all of the voters of District #96, I want you to know that I will try my hardest to be a Representative that you will be proud of.  

     “Saying that, I need to ask for your help -- your input, your thoughts, your concerns, your expertise and your wisdom.  Geographically we have a very large district with a wide range of challenges and many diverse needs and complicated issues.   Let me know what you think about issues that arise.  Keep me informed as to  what you believe in and why.  And finally, let me know what I can do to help you and how I can best represent you, your family and your community.  Let me know about community events and gatherings that I might come and hear your voices. I have so very much enjoyed meeting you and I feel honored that I will be your Representative.”

      My Thanksgiving memories in last week’s column apparently got other people remembering theirs. Arlene Leighton sent this: “My earliest ones are from Canarsie Brooklyn where my grandmother and my 'Grandpa Pfau ' lived. The house on Bedell Lane was a white two story with a green porch.  Rose bushes in the front yard and back garden with red currants and gooseberries. [This] neighborhood was a melting pot of folks of Polish and Italian descent.  I remember the Thanksgiving table with a turkey, homemade  kielbasa and lasagna.  There was a farm down the road were we got fresh milk and eggs.  My parents were 'modern' having moved to the suburbs of Long Island.  They were more into leaving their heritage behind from what I remember. My earliest memories were peering over the kitchen worktable and watching my grandmother's hands preparing these foods.  She made everything from scratch. And today......I am getting ready jars of homemade brined dill pickles and tae baek radish kimchi for my extended Jewish and Korean family to bring down to our Connecticut Thanksgiving.” Arlene has become a skilled maker of Kimchi, which some say is the Korean national dish; it’s often made with cabbage, though Arlene uses the Korean radishes she and Jeff grow in their Youngtown Road garden. She mentions the Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz   as a helpful book, and says “Though [they are] from different traditions, brined pickles and kimchi use the same methods of preserving and enhancing the nutrients in foods... Food for thought about what can bring us together.” With our Korean-Taiwanese daughter-in-law, we too have been introduced to new foods and tastes. Wally and I, like most in our generation, both grew up without garlic or hot peppers in any form; how that has changed!

      It was upsetting to wake up Thanksgiving Day to an apparent repeat of the Halloween storm, complete with power outages. Though we didn’t lose it, I still took up Rose Thomas’ offer of Arabella, the wood oven that’s the centerpiece of her baking and pizza business. In a L’ville Bulletin Board post she invited anyone in town to bring over their turkey and cook it in Arabella. Once heated up for a day of baking, it retains the heat for another day or more. Our 20# bird was done in a record 4 hours, and all agreed it was the best-tasting turkey ever.

       After several days of no power at Halloween, I went to Radio Shack and for $30 got a neat little wind up radio that ought to help pass the long hours in the dark. I also just learned, during this storm, that Central Maine Power has an excellent website (that, of course, only those with power, or perhaps phone access, can use) that lists outages by county/town/street. It’s also helpful for anyone who’s away from home and worries about how we’re faring back here in L’ville. I’ve got it bookmarked….

      Have you stopped in at Beyond the Sea right next to Frohock Brook at the Beach, 2526 Atlantic Highway? Owner Nanette Gionfriddo, who moved her business from Belfast to Lincolnville nearly two years ago, gave me and a granddaughter the grand tour of her shop. What a great place to do some Christmas shopping with a large collection of Maine books, handmade cards, scarves, and jewelry, all from small or family-owed businesses, delicious carmels (I had a sample), Persephone books (an interesting line of out-of-print books), Maine-made jams, pickles, etc.  In short, a great shop that deserves discovery!

     As a resident of Lincolnville Beach (defined as having a 789 or 236 phone prefix – that is, anyone living on the Bay side of Stevens Corner/Bald Rock trailhead) I keep an eye on Beach businesses. With thousands and thousands of cars passing through every year, many of them summer visitors looking for interesting places to stop, the Beach is a prime location. Dwight Wass, Maine Artisans co-op, and now Nanette Gionfriddo and further along, Cronin & Murphy Gallery, are all bringing the arts to the Beach. Here’s my dream for a couple of the currently empty shops along the sidewalk down there: wouldn’t they make great studios for working craftsmen? Some may remember when Robert Bolton worked in his stained glass studio in one of them. People love to watch craftsmen work, and to bring home something they saw being made. Just as Hallowell and Searsport are known as “antique” towns, the Beach could be known as a place to see art being made.

      What are some other Lincolnville places to shop for Christmas this year? Let me know.

To be included in This Week in Lincolnville, contact Diane, ragrugs@midcoast.com with events, family milestones, wildlife sightings, anything to do with our town.